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Chaz Bono Biography

Name at birth: Chastity Sun Bono

Chaz Bono is the only child of Sonny and Cher, a famous pop music duo of the 1960s who became TV stars in the 1970s. Born Chastity in 1969, Chaz was the cherubic daughter of the hippie-era couple who rose to fame with pop songs such as “I Got You Babe” and “The Beat Goes On.” In her childhood, Chastity was a familiar face on her parents’ hit TV show, a variety series that lasted from 1971 to 1974. Her parents split up and went on to different careers: Cher had a stellar solo career as a singer and an admirable career as a movie actress, and Sonny was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1994 before dying in a 1998 skiing accident. After a brief fling at a music career in the early 1990s, Chastity Bono became a public advocate for gay and lesbian causes. For many years an outspoken lesbian, Chastity announced in 2009 that she was undergoing a sex-change operation. By 2010, Chastity Sun Bono was Chaz Salvatore Bono. He documented the procedure for Becoming Chaz, a 2011 documentary that ended up with three Emmy nominations after being aired on the cable network owned by Oprah Winfrey.